wore our t-shirts and jeans tight, for­got how we once
want­ed to blend in with the boys. Until that day we saw
the girl wear­ing cam­ou­flage as a short skirt,

dark patch­es rid­ing up her thighs, the green
catch­ing the high­lights in her eyes, and we remem­bered
those cold Novem­ber days when our moth­ers

found us hud­dled in our own bed­room hunt­ing camps,
our lips tight­en­ing around whis­pers,I’m hid­ing, can’t you see that I’m hid­ing?

The Dirt Sis­ters

Because we were the only two girls
in a neigh­bor­hood filled with boys,
we aban­doned the lit­tle league fields
to play in the old strip mines above
Toby Creek. With every climb,

we strived for trac­tion. Slip­ping,
sneak­ers slid­ing, we fell, bro­ken pieces
of shale pierced the ground, split
open our skin. At the top, we yelledQueen of the Moun­tain, sure

We want­ed to rule a king­dom of scraped land
and thin tufts of yel­lowed grass.
We staked our claim, scratched our names
in the dirt, became blood sis­ters with a sharp poke
and two grit­ty fin­gers pressed togeth­er.

You were the leader, nev­er mind­ing
how dust lined soaked your ankles, how
a thin cloud of dust cir­cled your head
like a halo, how you swiped your pricked fin­ger
against the thighs of your jeans,

the red a rust streak soaked to your thighs.
At home, My moth­er sighed, spit
on a dish tow­el, wiped my face.There’s a beau­ti­ful young lady under­neath
all this, she said. I nev­er said out loud
that I wasn’t so sure.

Karen J. Weyant's work can be seen in 5AM, the Barn Owl Review, Cave Wall, The Fid­dle­back, Fly­way, Cop­per Nick­el and Riv­er Styx. Her first chap­book Steal­ing Dust was pub­lished in 2009 by Fin­ish­ing Line Press, and her sec­ond chap­book, Wear­ing Heels in the Rust Belt won Main Street Rag's 2011 Chap­book Con­test and will be pub­lished in 2012. In 2007, she was award­ed a poet­ry fel­low­ship from the New York Foun­da­tion for the Arts. She now lives and writes in War­ren, Penn­syl­va­nia, but teach­es at Jamestown Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege in Jamestown, New York.